iEimis

Hi all,

You may be able to tell that I am quite a newbie in the airline mileage schemes.

We've flew Emirates once a couple of years ago and been given 15000 Emirates Skywards Miles as a goodwill gesture due to severely delayed flight which resulted in us missing our connection in Dubai which they claimed as an extraordinary circumstance (Medical Reasons of passenger aboard the operating Aircraft).

Long story short myself and my sister now both have 19900 Skywards Miles, however, by the looks of things they are pretty worthless in the grand scheme of things. I've noticed that it's possible to transfer Skywards Miles in multiples of 6000 in exchange of 2000 Heathrow Rewards points. Assuming I convert 18000 I will have 6000 in Heathrow Rewards which I could then transfer into Avios.

Is this a good use of skywards miles, or is anyone aware of anything that would be better?

I should add that I am quite keen on accruing my miles with BA as I took out one of the AMEX Credit Cards recently. Also BA / Avios seem to be one of the more generous mileage schemes around in Europe all things considered.

I have noticed they did run 100% and 50% transfer promotions in the past, so waiting for one of those would be good. Skywards miles will expire in November 2020 so there is still some time.

Many thanks

- iEimis

marconess

I'm not sure where you're based but I've always used my lower amounts of Skywards Miles (stopped traveling to the CMB so much recently) on shorthaul redemption on EasyJet. Redemption's start at 7500 - not a good use of miles by any means but at least they won't rot and expire.

mickeyjaw

AFAIK it can't be done. If you transfer from Skywards to Heathrow Rewards then transfer of those points to other mileage schemes is blocked. You can only cash out for shopping vouchers / parking vouchers.

There was a recent 50% bonus from Skywards to Heathrow Rewards and also a 100% bonus for cashing out Heathrow rewards for shopping vouchers.

I managed to turn ~24k into £240 of shopping vouchers late last year.

The bonuses come around regularly so it might be worth holding out for a bit.

Paren

Correct, I don't think it can be done.

I was in a similar scenario just a few weeks ago. My previous employer kept booking me on EK, I had a load of Skywards miles which were about to expire. I transferred them to Heathrow Rewards but it would not let me transfer them to BA (only the small number of points you get when registering for HR).

So as a result I had £200 to spend at Heathrow \o/

DYKWIA

Indeed. And the EasyJet flights can be booked on the EK site rather than having to go via call centres. Probably the best use of 19K points.

iEimis

Thanks for the answers, upon reading T & C's more closely it does not work that way indeed.

I am based in the UK so could potentially use it to redeem easyjet flights, however, it's crazy to see many routes I am interested in actually being far cheaper on BA/Iberia let alone allowing to accrue miles and tier points. Since when low-cost carriers become so uncompetitive to standard carriers?

Anyways, it may well be worth waiting to see if another 100% cash out offer comes around for vouchers so that I can bag some gadgets from Dixons

Thanks everyone.

m3red

Paren

Exactly what I did.. 512GB iPhone XS Max was the same price as 256GB at Dixons Travel, so with the Heathrow Rewards I had, I saved nearly £500

simon79

Raffles

Im a new user

It might be obvious, but have you considered crediting your EK flights to one of EK's partner airlines? For example, if you credit to AS, JL, MH or QF, then you can redeem on BA.

raggo

I've just been on the Emirates sure and seen that you can convert skywards to accor hotels points at a radio of 2:1, 4000:2000.

So I think you can do this:

You can then convert accor points to Iberia plus avios at a ratio of 1:1.

Finally from Iberia to BA executive club oi that's where you want them to end up.

What do people think the value of a skywards Mile is? I personally think they should be just as valuable as an axisa so 1:1.

Raffles

This must be new with Accor. Finnair, Eurostar and Qatar offer it but I didn't know about EK.

Makes it a half-decent way of cashing out Amex points because 1 Accor points is 2 Eurocents of hotel room, so you're getting 1 Eurocent per Amex point. At around 0.88p that blows away any other pseudo cash redemption.

Raffles

raggo

Whoops, sorry! I tried to help.

Anyway, so are we saying there's no way to get from skywards to avios then? That's pretty sad, as I have 28k, half of which are expiring in Julyi